The projected rebuilding of Stuttgart’s central train station has
prompted major protests, with demonstrations regularly attended
by tens of thousands of people. A brutal police operation that left
several protestors hospitalised helped catapult the protests into the
focus of media attention. The article reconstructs the history of the
project and the development of the protests in order to formulate
general reflections on social movement politics and the relationship
between spontaneity, political strategy and the autonomy of extraparliamentary
movements.